News and Announcements

The National Minority Enterprise Development Week Conference is the nation's premier event for minority businesses and the public and private sectors. The 2014 National MED Week Conference offered a venue for minority-owned firms to access information, tools, and resources to grow their businesses both domestically and internationally.

Saturday, November 30, 2013 is Small Business Saturday® – a day to celebrate and support small businesses and all they do for their communities. Please join MBDA and organizations across the country in supporting your local small business by shopping at a small business.

This Saturday support, the local small businesses that create jobs, boost the economy and preserve neighborhoods around the country. First there was Black Friday, and then Cyber Monday, and now Small Business Saturday® to help drive shoppers to America's job creators. Small businesses have generated 64 percent of net new jobs over the past 15 years and employ over half of all private sector employees.

Started in 2010, Small Business Saturday has boosted holiday sales for Main Street businesses around the country. Last year, nearly 70 million people shopped small in their communities for an estimated $5.5 billion in sales to independently-owned small businesses. This year, we can do even more.

Over the last thirty years, the MED Week brand and conference format has been broadly accepted and synonymous with quality support for the development and recognition of minority-owned firms. MED Week is more than just an event, for MBDA it is a part of our core mission to promote the growth and global competitiveness of minority-owned businesses. This year we will not host a National MED Week conference.

A private ceremony was held at the U.S. Department of Commerce in Washington, DC honoring the 2013 National MED Week award winners. We invite you to continue to celebrate the spirit and traditions of MED Week through honoring our leaders in the minority business community today and every day.

MBDA’s newest excitement on Doing Business in Africa is its upcoming representation by our National Director David Hinson at the U.S.-Sub-Saharan Africa Trade and Economic Cooperation Forum (AGOA Forum) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia!

Nigeria is among the ten fastest growing economies in the world, featuring an impressive growth rate of 7.5% over the past five years! At MBDA, we are opening new markets for U.S. minority-owned companies to take advantage of trade and investment opportunities in Nigeria, which is recognized as one of the main drivers of international trade in West Africa.

Abraham Venable, GM’s Envoy to Black-Owned Business, Dies at 82

Abraham S. Venable, who oversaw General Motors Corp.’s outreach to black-owned businesses during the 1970s and 1980s after what he called a frustrating attempt to get government to help them, has died. He was 82.

He died on Feb. 21 at an assisted-living facility in St. Paul, Minnesota, according to his son, Douglas. The cause was congestive heart failure.

As GM’s head of urban affairs, a post he held from 1971 to his retirement in 1990, Venable coordinated the Detroit-based company’s programs to increase its business with minority-owned banks, insurers, suppliers and dealerships. GM was then the world’s largest automaker.

He also was vice president of a GM unit known as a Mesbic, or Minority Enterprise Small Business Investment Co., which functioned as a lender to minority-owned businesses.

Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 was an extremely productive year at MBDA and we are excited to share some of our many achievements. We’ve completed a major organizational restructuring that enabled us to increase funding to MBDA Business Centers. We also launched several “specialty” MBDA Business Centers including: the Atlanta MBDA Business Center, which is now staffed to provide expert guidance for minority-owned businesses in the healthcare technology and advanced manufacturing industry sectors; the San Antonio MBDA Business Center that has expanded their services to include expertise in exporting to Latin America; and the MBDA Federal Procurement Center, the first MBDA Business Center to solely focus on federal contracting.

Mayors across the country are working hard to strengthen local economic ecosystems, given the economic challenges cities face today.

As a former Mayor myself, I understand those challenges – How do we create more jobs? How do we attract new businesses? How do we enhance our workforce? And equally as important, how do we leverage the state and federal resources that may be available to help us achieve our economic goals and objectives?

The Obama administration understands these challenges and knows that cities play a vital role in strengthening our nation’s economy.

We know that development happens from the bottom up - that the best ideas come from America’s communities. Whether investment comes from the federal government, states, the private sector, or ideally all of the above, resources do more good when they serve a well-developed, robust plan.

The CDFI Fund supports financial institutions that provide loans, investments, and technical assistance to underserved communities. Since its creation has awarded $1.11 billion to community development organizations and financial institutions. It has awarded allocations of New Markets Tax Credits, which will attract private-sector investments totaling $26 billion, including $1 billion of special allocation authority to be used for the recovery and redevelopment of the Gulf Opportunity Zone.